Small consultancy of the year: Manifest London

(UK fees less than £2m)

Manifest London may have launched in 2009, but things really took off the past 12 months. It grew its staff from five to 14, which sparked a move into larger offices, and almost doubled its fee income.

In 2013, Manifest has been involved in one new-business pitch every week, and won 90 per cent of them. All the pitches have come through referrals and recommendations from clients or journalists. It has beaten global agencies to work with Blippar, Bloom.fm, CultureLabel and MySingleFriend.com.

In total, the agency has secured 20 new clients and only lost one due to budgetary issues.

The agency has also increased its percentage of retained work from 50 per cent to 80 per cent in the past 12 months to fuel the growth of the team. In June 2012, retained fees totalled £20k per month; in June 2013 that had risen to £70k.

Manifest has offered its support to three charities on a pro-bono basis and offers all retained clients the opportunity to pay a five per cent extra fee, which it will double in resource to support the charity of their choice with a comms campaign.